Boulder
by love from elysium
Summary: Sirius looks back on one of the most defining moments of his life; the last time he ever saw his brother Regulus. There is a lot of regret that he still bears. It is with an ache in his chest that he thinks of that warm night spent with Marlene by the lake and the surrender he saw in his brother. Her lips never did taste so sweet and his house was never so insignificant.


**A/N: I imagine Sirius recounting this during the most traumatic period of his life. Marlene had recently been murdered. Peter had betrayed Lily and James causing their murders as well, framing Sirius in the process. I think these events would have severely warped his character and demeanour thus explaining the pensive narration, perhaps from a cell in Askaban.**

**Thank you to my wonderful beta T. A. Griffy**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing. I'm just playing. :)**

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**Boulder**

_With your heart like a stone  
You spared no time in lashing out  
And I knew your pain and the effect of my shame_

_But you cut me down_

_-Mumford and Sons_

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By the time I turned twenty-two I had realized that all the good things in my life were smoke escaping through my fingers and my regrets stones weighing down my pockets.

This is my confession of the boulder among the stones.

During the spring of my last year at Hogwarts the warm weather came early. The days were hot and misty, and the nights breezy and refreshing. The effect spring weather had on me during my teenage years was something that I have since lost. The sudden warm weather gives a crazed rejuvenation to youth. That spring in particular I remember feeling so completely and utterly alive, invincible even. To compound this, I was seeing a girl named Marlene McKinnon. To most, she was a very beautiful young woman, which came from the easy confidence she carried herself with. She was coveted by both males and females, given for different reasons. To me, she was an idol, a beauty queen, ecstasy, and the devil in one person. To me, she was more than beautiful. She was astonishing. She made my chest ache when I saw her but could not touch her in some way. Most of all, though, during that hot spring, she was mine.

In the end, my fleeting love turned out to be both an evading smoke ___and_a stone about my person. Not, however, the boulder that I am getting to.

It does, however, start with her and the sticky sweat of a late May night. It was long enough past curfew for it to be dark in the grounds. But after years of what can only be described as mischief, curfew was such an ancient worry that I can't remember if it even crossing my mind as Marly and I strode through the grass. Were we reckless? We always had been, yes. But together especially so because together the world was newer more exciting than before.

Habit made us stop in front of a thick rooted ash, mere meters from the lip of the lake. It was the shade offered by this particular tree that my friends, usually James, Remus, Peter and myself, had flocked to nearly every fair-weathered afternoon. It had in many ways become ___our_tree. The memories it had witnessed gave it a sentimental value that the countless others could not replace.

But I was not thinking of the tree when I forced Marlene up against its trunk, my lips colliding with hers. Looking back I think I may have been rougher with her than I realized. Not that she did not return the intensity. She did. I think it was because I did not have to treat her as delicately as other girls that made her so exciting and new to me. Even still, I was broad shouldered and nearly a foot taller than her, making me significantly bigger as my body molded against her. I wanted her, all of her. I wanted to touch her, be everywhere. I wanted to overwhelm her the way she did me. Never before and never again in my life did I ever hunger for anything or anyone the way I had for Marlene McKinnon.

I think a parade of centaurs could have stampeded by and I would never have known, she was so consuming. I only noticed she was trying to break apart when her palm pushed against my chest.

"Sirius," she breathed against my lips. I had taken a step backwards so that only our lips and arms remained touching.

"Marly." I could now tell that something had distracted her. She pulled my head towards her so that she could whisper in my ear.

"Someone's already here. They're sitting by the lake."

As I followed the direction of her gaze my first thought was:___James, you're an arse_.

But it wasn't James.

Marly held my wrist as she leaned forward from behind me. "Sirius, I think that's your brother."

But I had not needed her telling. For me there had never been any mistaking the feline arch of his back as he sat cross legged where the sparse grass began to mix with the sand. If he had known we were present his demeanour did not give him away. Even at a distance, his concentration on the reflection of the stars on the glossy water was so absolute. His intensity momentarily persuaded me that counting the freckles of the sky was indeed the most essential employment on earth. The crescent moon, though, went disregarded from his study. If you had known him you'd understand why.

But this quickly faded. What jarred me most about my brother's presence was not our illegal setting but instead the lack of escape routes. Since Regulus had first come to Hogwarts, our relationship had consisted of little more than calculated evasions and selective memories. By this I only mean that we avoided each other. See, the problem was we didn't know where we stood.

No, that's not right. We ___did_know where we stood. He was in Slytherin and I was a Gryffindor. When I turned sixteen I ran away from home. When he turned sixteen he became a Death Eater. In the Black family home he was celebrated, whereas I was singe mark on the wall. So, yes, we knew where we stood. We were natural enemies.

The problem was we had never treated each other as such. In my pre-Hogwarts years it had been simpler. We had gotten along as well as you could expect young brothers to. We had known early on there was something that made us different from our parents, our mother especially. We had hardly known our father. In some ways it felt as if we were secret allies against them. Together we fought against their tainted ideals. Had I loved Regulus? Without a doubt, yes.

The first sign of trouble came when I was Sorted into Gryffindor. There had been outrage and turmoil in the Black household, to put it lightly. Luckily I had been at Hogwarts when the initial news came. By the time I was home for Christmas my mother, as wicked as she might have been, had had a chance to cool down. When I came home for the summer our relationship was different. Regulus was a lot quieter. What I failed to recognize was that he had spent a year without me as a role model or to give direction. My mother had been the only substitute for the position I previously filled. I did not know it yet but this had been the beginning of the end. September of my second year at Hogwarts began and Regulus was Sorted into Slytherin. It stung. I had not considered it consciously prior to the Sorting, but some part of me had always assumed—hoped that he would be in Gryffindor like me.

Needlessly to say our relationship, or lack thereof, regressed. The worst part about it was that there was never a confrontation between us. He never gave me a reason to to hate him. My reasons for hating my mother could fill all the parchment in the school. She had abused me and I hated her for it. It was simple. But not with Regulus.

When James had brought the news that Regulus was now a Death Eater, I worked up enough anger and regret and disappointment to convince myself I hated him. Despite my knowledge of the friends he kept, of the Dark magic he practiced, and of the allies our family kept, it had still hit me like a slap in the face.

Bringing attention back to the present, I had taken slow steps towards my crouching brother. Somewhere in my mind I was aware of Marly releasing her light grip on my wrist. There was adrenaline in my veins.

Mere meters from my brother, I stopped. He looked like me. His dark hair had grown out. The black curls matched the unkempt length of my own. I knew he would soon cut them. Semblance is a form of admiration that neither of us would afford. They fell in front of his eyes as he reach down for the cigarette packet beside his knee. I watched as his violently trembling fingers fished one out and lit it. It was only in the instance of light did I realize that his eyes were red and swollen. Had he been crying? I could only speculate whether he was high or tearful. However, events I learned of much later led me to believe both were likely. The desperation in the way he took drag after drag without restraint could not have been more evident in his features.

Displacing my weight, my foot sent a stone skidding. The sound made my brother turn and face me. Our eyes met for the first time in perhaps a year. This time we did not pretend we hadn't seen each other. I did not attempt to continue on robustly with a story I had been telling James or pretend to retie my laceless shoe as he passed in the corridor. This time we stared blatantly.

I may have misled you into believing that we were on the brink of a tremendous argument because the evasion was finally over. This is not the case. In fact, I wish it were because instead we said nothing. I saw the surrender in his face. I can only pray he saw the guilt in mine.

In the end, I turned my back on him and walked back to where Marlene waited.

Regulus was killed months later just shy of his eighteenth birthday. That night was the last time I ever saw his face or the light in his grey eyes. If I had known that it would be the last time I ever saw my kid brother, maybe I would have tried harder to find the right words. If I couldn't, maybe at least I would have stared a little longer.

And now he holds the weight of a boulder in my heart and in my pocket.

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A/N: I hope you enjoyed it! Drop me a review if you want to make my day! :)

Elysium xo


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